Santee Cooper asked to stall coal- burning plant
By John Temple Ligon Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Can there be a clean coal plant? A healthy cigarette? Pee Dee people are looking for both.

Santee Cooper still plans to build what it terms a clean- coal plant, a pulverized coal- burning 1,320- watt power plant on a 2,709- acre tract in Florence County along the Great Pee Dee River, near Kingsburg and Pamplico.

Santee Cooper has submitted a Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) air quality permit application. If approved, the application would allow the company to build a new power plant consisting of two coal-fired boilers.

According to DHEC, each boiler would have a maximum rated input capacity of 5,700 million British Thermal Units (BTU) per hour.

As proposed, the boilers would be capable of burning a blend of coal and petroleum coke (petcoke), in addition to fuel oil or natural gas, during the startup process. Each boiler would provide steam to a generator to produce a nominal 660 megawatts of electricity.

Santee Cooper plans to install air pollution control devices, which could reduce particulate matter (PM); sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions; and mercury and sulfuric acid emissions.

During construction, 1,200 jobs would be supported by $106 million spent in- state. After construction, the plant would generate $44.2 million annually in direct spending in- state while it employed 112 workers. Altogether, Santee Cooper calls the plant its $1 billion project.

But detractors are growing in numbers and in sound objections, as is the count of potential pollution victims.

If Santee Cooper is stalled in its quest for a new power plant, critics offer alternative routes to cleaner solutions.

Cautionary critics, including the Coastal Conservation League, say Santee Cooper should have studied the economic impact of alternative plants. And the U.S. Department of the Interior says the plant might be put on hold until the understanding can be shared over how much of mercury fallout and air pollution does it take to damage the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, and how much of that will come from Santee Cooper's new coal- burning power plant.

The U.S. Depart - ment of Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service recommends Santee Cooper drop the pulverized coalburning power plant in favor of a coal gasification plant, something like what Duke Energy plans to build in Indiana for $2 billion instead of Santee Cooper's $1 billion.

In other words, one good reason Santee Cooper plans on building a pulverized coal- burning power plant instead of a coal gasification plant is $1 billion dollars, the difference in cost between the two. Besides, only a few coal gasification plants are in operation in the world.

As Santee Cooper claimed recently, the only feasible way to supply the amount of electricity needed along the S.C. coast by 2012 is to build the pulverized coal- burning power plant, or expect the lights to go out.

What Santee Cooper, or it detractors, are not talking about is wholesale wheeling, the permitted transmission of electric power across power lines from one utility through another to another. The 1991 Energy Policy Act allows for such commerce at a fixed federal rate.

Retail wheeling failed to get included in the 1991 bill due to extraordinary lobbying efforts by SCANA, Duke, Progress, Santee Cooper, and all the other electric power players who were threatened by retail deregulation. Wholesale wheeling, however, was included and is allowed.

So if Santee Cooper sees a possible down time before the completion of its next power plant, the infrastructure and the laws are in place to allow Santee Cooper to import the electric power it needs for its customers.

Once its new power plant is up and running, there's no reason Santee Cooper can't wheel out to others in the South who may get caught a little short on electric power during their down times, picking up revenues and opportunities Santee Cooper might have lost before its new plant was built.

Back to the retail side of deregulation: It must be noted memories of California power brownouts and Enron financial blowouts are too graphic and too recent to see any efforts to deregulate the retail side anytime soon.